Follow Us

Pot-bellied, hippy Jesus doing TV promos

If you want to start a controversy, one good way is to show Jesus Christ as a pot-bellied, whiskey-slugging hippy who weasels his way into a nightclub by turning the bouncers into dwarfs, then turns a couple of ordinary-looking women into busty, half-naked models, and eventually leaves in a stretch Hummer. That’s the plot of a new promo from Plug TV, a youth network in Belgium. The Catholic Church believes the ad “crosses the limits of respectability.” Plug TV says it isn’t blasphemous and in fact contains an inspirational message about a “laid-back Jesus addressing youth.” In any case, Jesus’s excessive behavior is not without consequences. As he’s about to cruise away from the club, he is whisked up to Heaven, where he gets an earful from God, who’s decked out in a “Number one dad” T-shirt.